Internships are a major part of police education. Tutor’ role is essential in creating a qualitative experience for the students and in offering the possibility of acquiring knowledge, competences and skills. Police education and training take place in a Europe of integration, diversity, mobility and migration. Transnational activities bring major challenges to police work and now, when we witness situations in which, in different areas, the intervention of public order forces is needed, it is vital to find a global/transnational solution in management (e.g. global pandemic management). In these circumstances, three police educational institutions from Romania, Germany and Hungary- Școala de Agenți de Poliție ”Septimiu Mureșan” Cluj-Napoca, Police University Rhineland-Palatinate, Miskolci Rendeszeti Szakgimnazium-have united their efforts in a strategic partnership, intending to create a unitary practical training framework in police educational institutions by developing the tutors’ competences and by organizing the internship according to European trends in the field of education and professional training. In order to achieve this target, four big objectives were established:1.increasing the objectivity and quality in the organization of the internship for the police educational institutions students’ by correlating the educational methods and instruments of the tutors with the results of the trainees learning program and creating guides regarding this activity; 2.for the professional tutors, gaining the necessary competences that will allow them to work as tutors based on a study program created according to the requirements of labor market;3.increasing the efficiency of teaching and work learning by using innovative IT means and instruments;4.strengthening the professional role of tutors in civic education of the students regarding diversity and principles of the rule of law in contact with marginalized groups. The project’s results will be a series of innovative intellectual outputs: Basic elements of the Occupational Standard for tutors, Project of Study Program for the qualification of professional tutor, Educational Curriculum Project for tutor’s Professional training, Internship Guide, Tutor’s Internship Guide, Student‘s Internship Guide, TRIDENT Educational Platform. All the intellectual outputs are primarily addressed to tutors. They will have a unitary occupational and training framework, adapted to the new transnational needs, and also several didactical instruments and methods that will help them in their tutoring activity. The police units where the tutors are hired will have clear criteria in choosing and evaluating the tutors and will have the certainty that their activity is a qualitative one, based on a qualification which has a training standard. The police educational institutions from the three countries will be able to use these tools for organizing the tutors’ training and managing the students’ internship. Furthermore, the students will also benefit from their own dedicated guide and from the educational platform that will become a learning, assessment and communication tool. During the 34 months of project implementation, we will organize seven transnational meetings and four multipliers events. Each partner will be responsible for the dissemination, sustainability and durability of the intellectual outputs in his country in Romania, Germany and Hungary. At the dissemination and visibility activities, and at the multiplier events, we will invite middle level managers and tutors from the police units where students’ internship is taking place, teachers and students from all participating institutions, but also from other police educational organizations, other delegates from police educational institutions, national police managers and Ministry of Interior from participating countries. We will invite also delegates from associated partners, from organizations that work with minorities and/or marginalized groups, local/national mass media representatives. After the project will be finished, cooperation between the partners will further promote the exchange of expertise on requirements for European police work and the understanding of a Europe of nations and ethnic groups. Through shared best-practice examples, innovative analogue and digital products will be further jointly developed which could be used transnational. The project’s effects on medium and long term will be assuring a tutors’ professional training based on a unitary qualification standard, encouraging expertise exchange regarding European police work requests, strengthening the cooperation between educational institution and police stations and continuously developing a contact system based on international partnership. The developed outputs will be placed on the partners’ websites and will be accessible for policemen all over the country, and to other European partner police forces.
In order to achieve the goal of the project, to create a unitary framework of practical training in police education units by developing the competences of tutors and organizing the internship in accordance with the European trends in the field of education and training, the project has set itself 4 objectives. The first objective consisted in increasing the objectivity and quality in the organization of the internship for the police educational institutions students’ by correlating the educational methods and instruments of the tutors with the results of the trainees learning program and creating guides regarding this activity. The second objective was to give the professional tutors the necessary competences that will allow them to work as tutors based on a study program created according to the requirements of labor market. The third objective consisted in increasing the efficiency of teaching and work learning by using innovative IT means and instruments. The fourth objective consisted in strengthening the professional role of tutors in civic education of the students regarding diversity and principles of the rule of law in contact with marginalized groups. By reaching out these four objectives, SAPSM intended and managed to create the premises of regulating a body of tutors in the Romanian Police, as a distinct specialization, added to work duties, in order to underline and consolidate the importance of their activity within basic professional training of policemen. HdP intended and succeeded to improve the content and organization of the tutors‘ training. MRVT, although it had a system of training for tutors before this project, this was not standardized, but now an exhaustive list of tutors’ activities and competences was developed.
Internships are a major part of police education. The tutors’ role is essential in creating a qualitative experience for the students and in offering the possibility of acquiring knowledge, competences and skills. Police education and training take place in a Europe of integration, diversity, mobility and migration. Transnational activities bring major challenges to police work and now, when we witness situations in which, in different areas, the intervention of public order forces is needed, it is vital to find a global/transnational solution in management (e.g. global pandemic management). In these circumstances, three police educational institutions from Romania, Germany and Hungary - Școala de Agenți de Poliție ”Septimiu Mureșan” Cluj-Napoca (SAPSM), Hochschule der Polizei Rheinland-Pfalz (HdP), Miskolci Rendeszeti Szakgimnazium (MRVT) - have united their efforts in a strategic partnership, intending to create a unitary practical training framework in police educational institutions by developing the tutors’ competences and by organizing the internship according to European trends in the field of education and professional training. Before Trident Project, the international perspective was included in the students’ curriculum in police educational institutions, but this must be strengthen in the internships. All three participant countries were in different stages of modernizing and aligning the police professional training to the European policies in education and professional training, taking into account the specifics of public order and safety area. In two of the three participating countries (Romania and Hungary) the legislation did not require for internships a specific qualification for the tutors of police schools students. This is why the training level of a tutor, as a human resource involved in guiding the internship in these countries, wass not unitary, not having a qualification standard. In the case the German partner, HdP already had a training program for tutors but the University felt the need to update the program to modern training requirements and transnational crime phenomena in a Europe without borders. Prior to this project, only one of the partners (Germany) had basic digital materials for students, regarding the internship organization and management, but none of them had a unitary practice regarding didactical methods, means and instruments used by the tutors during the internship. Legislative changes and the modernization processes of police education in the three countries, according to European policies, required: rethinking internship from a transnational perspective, regarding tutors’ attributions, responsibilities and professional training, expectations from the internship, common learning results, identical processes‘ assessment, according to the common needs of a qualitative management; intensifying cooperation between training participants (eduational institutions and police units) and also regarding the internship’s organization, using digital technologies and IT instruments at a larger scale. These needs were addressed through Trident Project.